How close do you think these will be in performance? I love my SP3 but if I could get away with better battery life, more storage space, and similar performance it might be a good trade for me. The screen real estate will be one thing I'd not like to lose though.

We can only guess until some performance measurements start coming in hopefully in the next week or two. However, many tasks will perform at an acceptable level. In the end what's acceptable to each of us varies. I felt the Surface RT was just a bit to slow for my tastes although it worked and many are using it. I use a Surface 2 almost daily for many things and find it enjoyable to use yet doing some of those same tasks on an i5 SP3 is much quicker but the difference is maybe a second or two on most so the bulk of time using the device it's waiting for me not the other way around.

Some tasks that take a minute on an Atom may only take 40 seconds on an i3 so in that 20 seconds difference if you find yourself drumming your fingers saying hurry up then it's not the right device. It all comes down to what you use it for.

What are the top 10 (or however many) things you would do with it. Think back over the last month, there are daily tasks, a few you only do once or twice a week, some less frequently.

I wonder if they will drop the i3 on the Surface Pro 4 to differentiate more.
They don't make the perfect configuration for us which would be 4GB Ram and 64GB storage. We don't need 128GB storage, but I'm concerned only having 2GB RAM will make it painful to use multitasking legacy apps.
Users are not going to be running massive apps, gaming or rendering/editing HD video, but just having a browser open with multiple tabs plus Outlook, Lync, VPN and a PowerPoint open at the same time is going to be a struggle for a 2GB system used for someone on the road who may have a desktop in their office for heavier tasks.

We also need Windows 8.1 Pro which will be another unannounced higher price when the business model is released. The business version of the Surface 3 could be as high as $699 if they charge $100 to upgrade to 4GB/128GB plus another $100 for upgrading from 8.1 Core to 8.1 Pro.
With $799 i3 SP3, the price already includes Windows 8.1 Pro, 4GB RAM and a CPU that will be more capable than the Atom on the Surface 3.
Disadvantages of the SP3 will be additional weight, not being fanless and having an older CPU that will have multiple hours less battery life. Lots of people may also need to get reading glasses to deal with older legacy desktop apps on the ultra high resolution, yet small screen. Tiny icons, tiny menus, tiny text. Lots of squinting and missing of tiny touch targets with fat fingers.

On the other hand, if the business edition is available with a 4GB/64GB model with 8.1 Pro at a price closer to $600, or that plus bundle package with a keyboard for $699 that will be quite interesting.

I wonder if they will drop the i3 on the Surface Pro 4 to differentiate more.
They don't make the perfect configuration for us which would be 4GB Ram and 64GB storage. We don't need 128GB storage, but I'm concerned only having 2GB RAM will make it painful to use multitasking legacy apps.
Users are not going to be running massive apps, gaming or rendering/editing HD video, but just having a browser open with multiple tabs plus Outlook, Lync, VPN and a PowerPoint open at the same time is going to be a struggle for a 2GB system used for someone on the road who may have a desktop in their office for heavier tasks.

We also need Windows 8.1 Pro which will be another unannounced higher price when the business model is released. The business version of the Surface 3 could be as high as $699 if they charge $100 to upgrade to 4GB/128GB plus another $100 for upgrading from 8.1 Core to 8.1 Pro.
With $799 i3 SP3, the price already includes Windows 8.1 Pro, 4GB RAM and a CPU that will be more capable than the Atom on the Surface 3.
Disadvantages of the SP3 will be additional weight, not being fanless and having an older CPU that will have multiple hours less battery life. Lots of people may also need to get reading glasses to deal with older legacy desktop apps on the ultra high resolution, yet small screen. Tiny icons, tiny menus, tiny text. Lots of squinting and missing of tiny touch targets with fat fingers.

On the other hand, if the business edition is available with a 4GB/64GB model with 8.1 Pro at a price closer to $600, or that plus bundle package with a keyboard for $699 that will be quite interesting.

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The Surface 2 only has 2 GB RAM and I have 16 tabs open in IE and documents open on the Desktop, PDFs Open in Reader, Mail etc. Performance is not degraded. Swapping with an SSD is quick. However, Id definitely go for the 4GB/128GB its worth $100.

The argument could also be made that Microsoft's target audience for this device probably won't be the multi-tasking crowd.

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Not really. It's not that cheap of a device to let that go.
At about $629 minimum price with a keyboard, people will expect some multitasking.
If it was a $79 HP Stream 7, opening one app at a time would be something you might have to deal with without complaint in exchange for the super cheap price.
A browser with many tabs open, Outlook and multiple Office documents open at the same time is the kind of multitasking people are going to expect to work without problems.
High end gaming and video editing? No. Multitasking common office apps and browsers? Yes.

I wonder if they will drop the i3 on the Surface Pro 4 to differentiate more.

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I reckon you could be on to something there. My main complaint with the Surface 3 is the pricing (well, and sizing) being too close to the Pro model. Getting rid of the current entry model might make a lot of sense...

Would be fine with me I think i5 seems to be around the peak for the Pro models anyway.